The Cat Who Wasn't Really There
by Zelith
Summary: People say that I'm not really there. But I assure you, I am. I know exactly what they say about me, and I'm completely aware that I'm dead. But there's much more to me than meets the eye, isn't there? [No PP, only slight DannyxSam, no other pairing mentioned]
1. Chapter 1

Everything started when I noticed the black-haired girl.

She was cute, for a human anyway. See, I was just your everyday normal black-and-orange calico stray ghost cat wandering around the human world. I didn't really understand the point of the colorful pelts the humans pulled on to keep themselves warm when all they needed was a cat. Or a fur coat. So this human caught my attention because of the colorful things humans used in the snow-time.

This one wasn't wearing any. Most humans wore these big fluffy things they called "coats" in the winter, but this one had a simple blue "sweatshirt" on. And get this, she was wearing "jean shorts", too! Humans wore those in the sun-time! She probably couldn't see me, because I wasn't too keen on getting chased down my humans for being a stray, but I was _gaping_ at her. This one, I liked this one. Sure, she was stranger than the other humans, but so was I. Ghosts tended not to like me because of my... _abilities._

So I got up from my perch on a snow-covered fence and meowed loudly, "Hey~, human!"

She turned at the sound of my meow, and her eyes widened when she saw me. She probably hadn't seen me earlier. I showed my fangs in a big yawn and a nice, catty smile as I meandered my way over to her. I rubbed against her legs, leaving strands of my fur behind. She turned her big blue eyes on me and she smiled as well, if you could call what those humans do a smile. A blue mist escaped her mouth, and she glanced aroudn nervously. I batted at the mist with a vague interest.

She scooped me up suddenly, my paws to the air. I didn't like that, but I let her do it anyway. Hey, a free ride is a free ride. Don't judge. She went running, and she didn't seem to mind that I shifted positions in her arms to sink my claws into her "sweatshirt" sleeve. The names humans think up, I swore they would be the death of me to remember. Well, the death of my afterlife.

Yeah, I was aware that I was no longer alive. I didn't know how I died, almost no ghost did, but I knew I was dead. For one, I could feel it in my insides. Namely, I only had the basic ones. Digestive system, nervous system (yeah, to whoever came up with the idea that ghosts can't feel pain, _you were wrong_), even a very, very, _very_ basic respiratory system. My heart didn't beat, not as far as I knew. Well, I could make it beat, but that took work and I didn't really like to do work.

The girl carried me quite a way away from where I had rubbed up against her for petting, but that was alright with me. I had been thinking about leaving there anyway. She set me on the ground, where I purred and rubbed up against her legs more. She needed a nice dose of my fur to keep her warm, I decided. There was no way her short, colorful pelt would keep her sufficiently warm. So I donated my fur to the wonderful cause. She smiled and pet my back, and I arched my back so that she could reach the place where the itchies I couldn't get to were.

She scratched there, and I purred louder. She picked me up again, and that time I was content with a belly rub on the way to wherever we were going. We entered this big warehouse-looking place, and she came face-to-face with a big black-haired male who looked a lot like her. Except, of course, they had two very distinct, very different scents. The big male radiated disappointment, and the girl began to radiate annoyance in retaliation. Apparently, these humans were smart.

"Dani," the boy began, " you know you're supposed to come here right after school." I understood exactly what almost all of those words were. What did "school" mean? Was that the place where all the kids went for a very long time to sit and stare at other people or to stare and scratch at paper?

"Dan_-ny_," the girl sighed, "I got held up. My ghost sense went off and there was this cat..." She held me out to the boy, who pulled back a little. I meowed to let him know that it was okay, I didn't mind being touched. Especially not by this girl. Dani, the boy said her name was. But his name was also Danny?

"No pets, cuz," Danny said, rubbing the back of his neck nervously, "you know that. He could get in some sort of accident around the house..."

She pouted and held me close, and I flicked my tail to let her know she was holding me a little too tightly.

"But Danny," she whined, "he was all alone in the snow and he's really friendly."

The two argued for a while, all the while I followed the conversation to the best of my ability. I found Ghost a little easier to understand than English, and they were speaking English. Sometimes, they switched into Ghost but they very quickly noticed and switched back. Finally, the boy sighed and "face-palmed". That meant he lost the argument.

"Fine, keep it," he sighed. "But you have to name it, you have to take care of it, and you have to make sure it doesn't run into anything dangerous. I'll go tell Mom and Dad." He slunk away, looking very shamed indeed(probably because he lost the argument to a girl who was younger than him), and he went down a set of stairs where fun sounds of whirring drills sounded. I wanted to go too, but the girl carried me up to a room and I decided that laying on her chest was a much better idea. She still needed to be kept warm, after all, and who better to do the job than a nice little ghost cat like me?

Two older people soon came barging in, one in a blue pelt and the other in an orange pelt. "Danny" was right behind them, looking smug.

"Danielle Jessica Fenton, you will get rid of this cat this instant!" the blue woman shouted. I pinned my ears back and cowered on "Dani's" lap. She held me protectively, like a human should, and pouted. She was refusing to give me up, that was for sure.

"But he's sweet and smart!" she protested. I wanted to break out into cattish laughter; I was smart, all right. Much smarter than she realized.

The man looked about to shout something, but then he said 3 simple words: "Where's the cat?" Oh, this was priceless.

"Dani" looked confused. "He's right here on my lap."

The woman frowned. "Danny, Dani," - why were their names so similar?! - "you shouldn't have scared us like that. There's no cat in here."

The two adults left, and once the teenagers were alone I broke into catty laughter. It sounded mostly like a human coughing, but it got the point across.

"He's right here," the black-haired boy muttered, rubbing his hand over my fur.

"Do you think maybe he's a ghost?" Dani said nervously. "I mean, my ghost sense went off as soon as he rubbed against me... but I just thought a ghost was near..."

Danny gave her a look. "A ghost was near. This cat," he deadpanned. She turned bright red, and I rubbed up against her face to let her know that if she was cold, I was right here.

"Right," she said, petting me distractedly. "So... what do we do with him?"

"If he's dead," the boy jumped as an orange-haired girl came into the room, "then you should send him back to the Ghost Zone." The girl wear wearing a blue, thin pelt in her hair, a long black pelt over her torso, and long blue "jeans" over her legs. She was very sensible to me.

"Jazz," my human complained, "but he's so adorable! Maybe he'll show up on camera..." The girl took a picture, then scowled. "No, he doesn't show up on pictures..."

The boy shrugged. "Well, hopefully he's smart enough not to come back here after we put him in the Ghost Zone."

My human stared at him. "Danny...!"

"No buts," the boy was firm. "He goes back."

I didn't really fancy going to the Ghost Zone. So I walked over to the boy and gave him a sharp nip on the finger. I scowled up at him, and after a few more nips (during which he tried to grab me), he gave up.

The orange-haired girl looked at me incredulously. "I can sort of see him. He's more like a really, really, really invisible shadow. He's pretty big, and really fluffy..."

My girl nodded. "Yeah, that's him." She thought for a moment. "I wonder if he already has a name?"

To her surprise, I turned back to her and gave a sharp nod. I looked around for something to write with, though my penmanship wasn't very good in this form. No thumbs meant that I couldn't grab anything. Finally spotting the "desk", which was really just a table that humans wrote on, I hopped up on it and took the pencil in my mouth. Twisting my head, I managed to write out, very poorly, four simple words.

_My name is Illusion._


	2. Chapter 2

Things escalated after that. The boy Danny freaked out, running from the room and getting a weird metal cylinder thing. He pointed it at me, but I simply smiled at him and twitched my fluffy tail. The girl Dani stared at me in shock; she probably hadn't counted on my being able to write. Or my being smart. The other girl, Jazz (wasn't that a type of 'music'? That weird loud stuff humans liked to listen to?), didn't seem surprised. She pet me and called me by my name.

"So, Illusion, you know how to write." I nodded at her, and licked her hand to tell her that I liked how she used my name. Her hand was dirty, so I twisted to grab it and then I cleaned it for her. "Do you know anything else?"

"Don't talk to it, Jazz!" the boy hissed. I glared at him before picking up the writing stick and scratching out my answer to the orange-haired girl's question.

_Yes. I can do simple 'math', and I can read. I understand English pretty well too, though I can't speak it. Not yet, anyway. I've been trying to learn._

I puffed out my chest in pride and watched her read my answer. She nodded and ran out of the room. I easily dodged the male's attack and followed the orange girl, figuring she couldn't have meant to abandon me. I was enjoying this attention, that was for sure. The girl put a piece of paper and a pencil on the ground for me, but I gave her an incredulous look. She couldn't expect me to write on carpet, could she?

So I took both things and hopped up onto her desk, setting them down there. I flicked my tail and watched her write down something on a piece of paper that was on a clippy cardboard thing that humans used as portable tables. A... "boardy-clips", right?

"Alright, Illusion," she said, writing down an addition problem with the cute little 'x' instead of a plus, "can you do this?"

I nodded and grabbed the pencil, thinking it over. The problem was "32 x 2", and I was pretty sure I'd seen this before. I'd gone to a few "classes" before, being very apt to wandering around and doing whatever I liked. As well as walking through walls, of course. I liked to scare the few people who could see me.

I got to the answer '64' after about five minutes, and I scribbled down onto my paper after my answer, _That's a little past me. I only know a little bit of this fancy addition with the x instead of the plus. _

She smiled as though I'd written something funny; she wrote down something too. I decided I was bored of her and hopped down, going back to the room with my human. I hopped up onto her desk, where she was doing some of the same fancy addition. I watched her for a bit, but I didn't really understand what she was doing.

I batted at her with one paw, but she absentmindedly petted me and went back to staring and scratching at the paper. Feeling insulted, I knocked the paper off of her desk and meowed. She pet me again but she ultimately went back to scratching the paper. I huffed, annoyed. If this was how she wanted to play it, we could play it this way.

So I laid down right on top of the paper, breaking the tip of the rock on the writing stick. She scowled at me, but I flashed her a nice big grin and rolled over onto my belly. No human had ever resisted the belly before, and this one crumbled before it now. She rubbed my white tummy fur, and I bit at her hand in playfulness. She tried to pull it away when I did that, but I held onto her pale, furless hand with sheathed claws. She eventually tore it away, since she had the advantage of size and strength, but I was sure that I would have won if I was as strong as she was.

Or as big. I mean, I was hardly as tall as my tail was long. She was at least ten times bigger than I was. My tail flicked, and I finally let her go back to staring at her paper. I didn't understand humans, not at all. Who would want to stare at a paper when there was a cat as handsome as I was around? I licked at my calico fur, sitting right in front of the boy Danny. He looked at me suspiciously, but he had paper to stare at too.

Annoyed that no one except for the strange orange-haired girl was paying attention to me, I hopped up onto the boy Danny's desk and scattered his papers. I meowed, very loudly. I wanted his attention, and I would have it.

_"What,_ cat?" he growled. I smiled a cat smile and flicked my tail at the ceiling. He stared at it uncomprehendingly, and then he glared at me as though I was wasting his time. He was wasting his own time with the stupid paper. I glared back at him and meowed again, insistent, flicking my tail at the ceiling. Realization dawned on him when he finally saw the blue mist escape his mouth. I batted at that, too, wondering why it happened. Maybe it just happened with all the humans in this house.

The boy followed me upstairs, to my great delight. I showed him all the rats that I could catch, making sure that he knew that they were perfectly okay because they were dead. He looked around, then glanced back at me uncertainly. I waved my tail to let him know that I wouldn't tell anyone that he didn't know how to hunt for himself. He glanced outside nervously, at which point I decided I needed to give him an extra nudge towards I wanted.

I sauntered up, swaying from side to side slightly, and rubbed against him. He watched me, not understanding, and I rolled my blue eyes at him. I sprinted over to the strange white cold box that humans kept their food in and rubbed up against it.

"Well?" I meowed. I knew he wouldn't understand what I said because he was a silly human, but I gave it a try anyway. "Are you going to feed me or what?"

***line break***

After I had my num-nums, I went back downstairs to find that my human was talking with the other girl, the one who liked to make me do fancy addition. Her name was some kind of music name. Pop, maybe? Rock?

"Jazz, he's probably like any other ghost in the sense that he doesn't like tests." Ah, Jazz! Jazz. I quite liked jazz music. It was nice and soothing sometimes, but when I was having a cat-fit it could fit that too. My human was so nice to remind me of the girl's name.

"I know," Jazz grumbled. "Still, it would have been nice to know how his mind works. It obviously doesn't work the same as a regular ghost's mind, because he's a cat..."

"Not completely true," I meowed, gaining their attention even though they couldn't understand me either. "My mind works like a human's mind, yes. A dead human's mind."

They stared at me, and then Jazz noticed the food in my whiskers that I hadn't yet bothered to clean. "He eats, Dani, look!"

"Yes, I eat," I answered, laying on my human's bed so sufficiently cover it with my fur, "and I breathe once every few minutes, too."

Even though they didn't understand me, I did enjoy responding to their questions. Sometimes I answered in Ghost Cat, which neither understood as well. Sometimes I answered in regular Ghost, though it was apparently too garbled for my human to understand. For the most part, I answered in my normal chirps and meows. It was fun to confuse humans.

Very fun.

They had to quickly stop and pretend to be talking to each other when the adults went by, probably because they couldn't see me. Mind, the orange-haired girl called me a really pale shadow. She couldn't see me too well, but at least she could see me partially. She thought I was handsome, which I totally was. I was the cutest cat on the planet. That included the Ghost Zone, by the way.

So I answered their questions in my own way until they finally forced me to mouth-write out my answers. They certainly liked the information I gave them, that was for sure. Though, I did warn them that any mirrors around me would be smashed to pieces and I didn't give them an explanation as to why. Better that they not know.

Once they left, somewhere around 10 at night, I stayed awake and watched the door. The two adults came in, muttering fiercely to themselves before they noticed the paper I'd written on, neglected by the girls. It was upside down, so I hopped on over and picked up the pencil. I wrote out those four simple words again and watched their expressions.

They didn't look very happy.


	3. Chapter 3

**Okay guys, I had a nice long chapter typed up AND THEN FF ATE IT AND I CAN'T GET IT BACK. So this chapter may be quite a bit less good as the one I had typed up before it disappeared. It was almost 2,000 words definitely. Sorry, guys. It's so devastating to lose an entire chapter. -sob sob-**

The next morning, the adults pretended that they hadn't seen me write on the paper. They were probably trying to pretend that it was just a dream. No one was paying me any attention, too. I found this very annoying, so I went to go look at my own reflection in the "bathroom" mirror. It didn't show my beautiful calico fur, instead my reflection showed something else entirely.

Staring back at me was a human-like ghost. He had immensely pale skin, almost paper white. His eyes were the same shade of blue as mine, and they were slightly almond-shaped like a cat's. He had black hair, the same shade as the majority of my fur, and sticking out of it was two black cat ears. One had a nick in it, just like mine, and they were patched with white and orange-tabby. _Just like mine. _He had a dark blue "sweatshirt" on with a hood to cover his ears. The pelt was stained with blood, as was a corner of his mouth. On the opposite side of the blood, he had a scar over his lips.

I extended a paw to touch the mirror, and he did exactly the same thing with his hand. My paw and his hand met, the only barrier being the the glass of the mirror. Then my paw and his hand went intangible, and we leaned towards each other. My paw went through his hand as it extended out of the mirror, and I found myself being flung into the mirror. Halfway through, my consciousness twisted away from my cat form and into the human-like ghost.

In less than a second, I found myself looking at the calico ghost cat whose form I had just shed for this one. I had become the human-like ghost in just one simple tap of a mirror.

***line break***

I stayed inside all day, bored out of my mind but not really up for changing forms again just to follow my human to school. I laid on her bed, my tail flicking between my legs. The white tip of my tail distracted me for about five minutes, but I very quickly tired of watching my own tail. The two adult humans were still home, however, and I didn't have the comfort of knowing that they couldn't see me in this form. Everyone could see this form; it was only my cat form that liked to remain invisible.

My blue eyes flickered to the wall, and I grinned a little. Why not have a little fun?

By the time my human got home from wherever she had gone and had lugged a bag into the room, I had mastered a few simple English words like "hi", "bye", and "words". I had also very quickly learned to say my own name just from looking at the weird book she had in her room that was supposed to help human children learn how to speak. I may not have been a child, but it didn't really matter to me.

Dani nearly screamed when she saw me, but I looked over at her and she must have recognized my eyes because she whispered my name. I liked its sound in English, and I smiled widely to show off my fangs.

"Hi," I said in English, very very carefully. "Illusion learn English."

She forced a smile, and she pulled me down to the ground. I didn't like being on the ground; I was happier in the air. But she held me down and helped me learn more English sounds, so I supposed it was okay. She had paper to stare at, though, and I became upset when she had to go 'study' for a 'test'.

I watched her for a while, keeping my feet planted on the ground so that the adults wouldn't get suspicious if they entered the room. That's what she told me, anyway. I watched her scratch at the paper and do fancy addition, which she called "multiplication". I liked the name "fancy addition" better.

After she was done staring and scratching at paper (she got mad at me for running my claws along the paper, but she did the same thing with the rock wood thing!), she sat me down on her fluffy sleeping pelt and made me use more English.

"Illusion like Ghos gooder," I muttered, unable to completely pronounce 'Ghost' in English. See, in the ghost language, the sound that the English letter 't' made didn't exist. We didn't use "tuh". I would have to learn to use it, but that didn't mean I had to like it.

"The word is 'better', Illusion, not 'gooder'," she said to me. I scowled, crossing my arms over my chest and pouting. English was so confusing to say; how did humans manage to communicate? "And the word is 'ghos-TUH.' With a 't' at the end."

I rolled my eyes and tried to make the 'tuh' sound she wanted me to make, but it sounded more like a 'vuh'. My ghost accent was very apparent whenever I spoke English.

"Illusion no like English," I snorted, turning my back on her. She scratched at my nicked ear some, but I tried to pretend that I didn't like it. I got up and left the room, finding the bathroom mirror again. Dani followed me and silently watched.

Once more, my cat form stared back at me instead of a human-like form. The cat's handsome calico fur shone slightly with the ghostly glow, and as I reached a hand out, he reached a paw out. We met at the mirror, my hand pressing against his paw. Suddenly, we went intangible at the same time, leaning towards each other. I found myself being sucked into the mirror, while the cat found himself being pulled out. My consciousness found itself inside the cat's body halfway through the mirror, and I found myself staring at the boy in the mirror.

I turned to my human, whose eyes were wide with amazement and maybe slight fear, and I gave her a loud meow. I was hungry and wanted my kitty num-num.


	4. Chapter 4

**Alright, this story will be updated whenever I have muse for it. The reason for this is because I have finally worked up a solid plot-line for the sequel of my first story. If you'd like to read the sequel that I'll be uploading later today, then I suggest you read "Shadowy Rose, Dark Path" first or else the new story probably won't make sense. But don't fear, this story ****_will_**** still get updates, just not as often.**

I didn't like it when my human disappeared for hours on end during the day. Why stare at other humans when I was here and I was a perfectly good distraction? So after about a week of watching her disappear, I decided to follow her there. She tried to stop me, she really did, but it's not easy to stop a determined ghost cat. I promised to be a very good cat, but she probably couldn't understand me.

Dani was a very nice human, though. Sometimes she changed her appearance, putting on a different pelt in a flash of light and turning her hair white and her eyes green, but that was alright with me. She was more like a ghost when she did that, and I had no problem with it. Though, she seemed to get very tired after she did so, probably because of all the ghosts who tried to fight her and lost. I would try to help, but she usually told me to stay down so I did.

I followed her all the way to the big red brick building where I used to often see human children go to stare at other humans and paper, something called "is cool". "Is cool" didn't seem very cool. In fact, every room I walked into was overly warm. There was no need for any of the humans to worry about overheating though, because I was there and I kept the rooms nice and cool for them. I wasn't sure if humans melted if they overheated, but ghosts did. I wasn't in the mood for melting, even though it could be very fun. Dani even fed me off of her plate during lunch in secret, probably because I was a good ghost cat for keeping everyone from melting.

There were quite a few people who could see me, but thankfully none of the adult people could. I creeped out quite a few of the boys who tried to hurt my human, that was for sure. All I had to do was appear on her shoulder(or at least nearby where they could see me) and they would get frightened. Really, though, humans were very fragile. I didn't know why they were so scared of such a handsome ghost cat like me.

I saw the boy Danny too, and he had two friends with him. I meowed at him as Dani and I passed, but he didn't even spare me a glance. Talk about rude. The black-haired girl with him looked at me, though. She looked afraid, even. But I meowed at her to let her know I was a good cat and then kept following Dani. I didn't want to lose my human, after all. Losing my human would mean I had failed a ghost cat.

She went into this weird room that looked like the bathroom in her warehouse den but it was much bigger, and there were no bathtubs. I was grateful for that; I didn't feel like getting bathed again. Dani had given me a bath just yesterday, and I had gone and rolled in the mud to get my scent back. She went into a tiny room inside the big bathroom, and I sat outside of it(even though I could get in very easily) to keep watch. No one would be sneaking up on my human, after all.

She exited the room quickly, and I followed her. She wet her furless hands and then dried them off after rubbing something suspiciously similar to "shampoo" on her hands. Then she left the big bathroom and I followed her, trailing at her heels. I settled down in her lap when she sat down in another room to stare at another human, and this human was using big English words.

When he handed out paper to stare at, I noticed that there were a bunch of little blanks. I supposed the man expected the kids to scratch on the paper too, but I got the feeling that Dani wouldn't appreciate it if I ran my claws through the paper for her. So I let her scratch at it with her writing thing, though it definitely wasn't a pencil. It looked like a pencil, but all she had to do was click on the end and then the tip would go back inside the contraption. I was pretty cure it was called an "ink pencil", but I didn't really care.

I poked my head up to watch her scratch at the paper, and that was when I felt eyes on me. I lifted my head and saw the man staring at me. I smiled at him, sure that he could see me now, and went back to staring at the paper with my human. He collected the papers after everyone had finished scratching on them, and he gave me another quick glance. Dani didn't seem to notice, wrapped up in a book now. I couldn't read the cover because the typing was all weird, but the book was about a boy named Harry Potter and how he was a "wizard". How strange. I could read the author, though. "J.K. Rowling".

Humans had weird names, that was for sure.

***line break***

After the class was over, the teacher pulled Dani aside.

"Yes, Mr. Lancer?" she said nervously. I didn't know why she was nervous; I was here to protect her, after all. If he tried to hurt her, he'd get all four sets of my claws in his face skin.

"You are aware that there is a... _ghost _cat following you around, correct?" He sounded tense. I wondered why.

"Oh, yeah," Dani answered in relief. I hopped up onto "Mr. Lancer's" desk and sat down, puffing out my chest proudly. He recoiled a little; he was obviously in awe of my handsome calico pelt. The balding man probably wanted it for his head. "This is Illusion. he doesn't like getting left behind at home, so he followed me today... Don't worry, he's completely harmless," she said quickly, noting the look on her teacher's face.

I frowned. I was _not _harmless; I was a big ghost cat who would protect his human! To prove it, I hopped up onto my paws and puffed up my fur to make me look bigger.

"Are you sure?" the male human asked, sending me a look of fear. I smiled in satisfaction and climbed onto my human's shoulder to purr and clean his cheek.

"Yes," she answered. "He's overprotective."

He let her go after that and we carried on to another place, her big metal thing called a "locker". She put all her books in it, and then she pulled some other ones out and put it into her bag. I didn't know why she didn't like it when I played in the big cloth bag, but I refrained for raking my claws through it. The boy Danny narrowed his eyes when he saw me on my human's shoulder, and he grabbed Dnai's hand very tightly (I gave him a warning nip for this, he could hurt her!) and pulled her out of the "is cool".

Really, I had no idea why he didn't like me. I was the one who had kept her safe all day, after all.


	5. Chapter 5

**So this is actually the last chapter. This was never meant to be a very long fic, but I appreciate all the support I've gotten for it. I may create something else like this sometime in the future, and I certainly enjoyed writing this piece. I hope you readers enjoyed this fic as much as I enjoyed writing it!**

Dani wanted me to show my "weird mirror-shift thing" to boy Danny, but I didn't really feel like it. He didn't like me, so I didn't like him, which meant that I would be doing _him_ no favors. I remained on Dani's shoulder while she stared at paper, at least until I got bored. So I went to look for the orange-haired girl, Jazz, and found that she was not home yet. I did find the older woman with red hair, though; Dani had called her "Mom" so I decided to call her that as well.

She was tinkering with some big box thing, and I batted at it in interest. She put it down on a table and went into the kitchen; I decided she couldn't have meant to put a perfectly good floor-thing on the table, so I knocked it down for her. It fell with a satisfying _thump_ and _crack_ as it broke apart. Delighted, I hopped down into the mess and began pushing pieces all over the room, unaware that the woman had returned to watch. She stared in amazement as the pieces moved around "all on their own" (aka because I wanted them to move).

"Jack, honey, come look at this!" she called. I jumped, staring at her; I hadn't noticed her until then. I waved my tail, seeing if she could see me, but nothing flashed across her face. I shrugged, figuring she wasn't important if she couldn't see my beautiful fur, and kept pushing the pieces about. I picked up a particularly big piece in my mouth and carried it around, trying to find a suitable place to put it.

The man in orange had joined the woman in blue, and they watched me move the pieces about. The man had something akin to excitement on his face and the woman was trying to find me. I could tell by the way she narrowed her eyes and squinted, looking about.

"It's a ghost!" the man shouted, a big smile on his face. "Where is it? Where is it? We can blast it to bits!"

I stopped, insulted. Blast me to bits? My fur would be ruined! Besides, it wasn't like blasting a ghost to bits would do anything. They could just reform with their own ectoplasm. I dropped the piece of box I was carrying and sat down, huffing. I felt very offended indeed. The woman was holding something; it wasn't paper to scratch at, though. It was another box, a bigger one. I decided to try communicating with the adults, even though I wasn't even in their plane of existence.

"Excuse me!" I meowed loudly, huffing. "I'm very offended by that. My fur would be ruined if you blasted me to bits."

_"Excuse me!"_ a mechanical voice said out of the box the woman was holding. _"I am very offended by that. My fur would be ruined if you blasted me to bits. I am a ghost. Fear me."_

Well, I certainly never asked them to fear me. Maybe it was just a bug in their box, though. I could fix that if they would let it put it on the floor where it belongs.

"Aha! It is a ghost!" the man in orange shouted joyfully.

"Jack! Hush!" the woman scolded. "You might scare it away. We need to get all the information off of it that we can, or else we'll never be able to catch that pesky Phantom!" She turned back to the room and smiled reassuringly. "Do you understand English, ghost?" she called, speaking very slowly as though I was dumb. I snorted; if anything, they were the dumb ones.

"Yes, I understand English," I meowed very primly, curling my tail around my paws. "Do you understand that I'm as dumb as you two humans are?"

After the box relayed my message (minus the whole 'Fear me' thing; that was a major, major bug they needed to fix), the woman's face contorted in an expression of disgust.

"Cheers," I said happily, strutting out of the room right between the two humans. I made sure to brush my ice cold fur against their legs; they shivered.

***line break***

It was fun to annoy the humans, but Dani needed me. She had turned her hair white again, except this time I found that the boy Danny could also turn his hair white! It was a pleasant surprise, and it certainly made me very happy. However, they weren't fighting the ghost. They were... spekaing to it?

It was an Observant. I shivered, fear flooding my artificial cat body. They were angry because of my meddling in the human world. I felt my cat form tear away me, and suddenly I was the human-like boy in the mirror. My cat form had disintegrated, but if I could get to a reflective surface, I could jump into it and stay safe for another century or two before I was able to reform my cat form.

I turned tail and ran, the Observant turning towards me. There was another ghost; he was sensing that I was leaving, and he wanted to take advantage of the fact that I was no longer protecting my human. My sweatshirt, stained with blood, suddenly became something within my awareness. I stopped, horrified, trying to tune out the memories of what I'd done.

"I can hide it from the world," I shouted at the Observant, "so why can't you let me hide from me?" I lunged at the ghost, slashing my claws across his face before I darted away. I shifted to running on all fours, going faster. And then I sensed it.

My human was in danger. She was in danger of melting if she used any more of the ghostliness I had discovered she had, and the boy was busy trying to fight his way to her. I veered off my course towards a glass window immediately, running faster and faster. The boy Danny noticed me, and for once when he looked at me his gaze wasn't filled with disgust and slight fear. His eyes betrayed his hope that I was protect the girl.

And I would.

I skidded to a stop in front of the girl right as the other ghost shot something at her; as a result, it went through my chest instead. I felt myself fading, and everyone who had seen me would forget me as soon as I had faded away. Chuckling, I turned to my human. She had a horrified look on her face, but I intended to comfort her.

"Don't worry," I rasped to her in English, pulling up long-dead memories of the language. "It'll be like I never even existed, because technically I shouldn't."

I chuckled as her face started to go blank; she would forget everything I had ever told her. However, with my last bit of energy, I forced one quote to stick in her head. She would not remember that it was I who had said it; she would only know that she had heard this quote from someone, somewhere.

"It'll be alright, Dani. The Cat Who Wasn't Really There was just an Illusion."


End file.
